Professional Chewing gum industry meeting point

According to Nielsen, the sales of chewing gum from 2001 until Nov 2010 were 813 Million US$ in Italy, the number one country in Europe in terms of value. Number two, very close is Germany with 804 M US$, then France and at more distance Spain and UK with vlaues almost half of those for the leaders.

Instead, if we see the figures for candy, the number one in volume by far is Germany with 333 Million kilos of candy consumed. Far from that is second place for UK with 172 M kg, France 109 M kg and then Holland, Italy and Spain. The consumption of candy per capita is lead by Germany, UK, The Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland, with more than 3kg per person and year. Portugal and Greece show the lowest figures with less than 1 kg per person and year.

The other day i was mentioning that i was in Achema, in Frankfurt/Germany. I did not mention that there was another company related to the chewing gum industry that was exhibiting there: This is Battaggion, from Italy.They are specialists in mixers for different industries and, of course, some gum factories around the world use their double sigma mixers. http://www.battaggion.com

Have you heard of the “French Paradox”? This term is associated to the low heart disease occurence in France, even the diet in this country contains a high level of fat. It is claimed that one of the elements that can contribute to this fact is the red wine (consumed at relatively high levels in France), and more in particular, to one of the ingredients in this red wine: The resveratrol. This substance is a polyphenol with antioxidant properties.

Some months ago was launched to the US market by Cheiron Holdings a gum named “Heart Strong Gum™”. This product contains resveratrol from the firm Fluxome (www.fluxome.com).

Now this danish firm announces a partnership with another danish well-known firm in the gum industry, Fertin AS (www.fertin.com), to produce chewing gum containing resveratrol.

It is always a good sign that companies research and develop products with high added value. Chewing gums offering something else than just a nice chew and flavour are always welcome in the family. It seems that the chewing gum industry is not able to fully break the high wall between food and pharma (the main exception to this rule is the well-know Nicorette (www.nicorette.com), the chewing gum produced by Johnson & Johnson containing nicotine. In this case, resveratrol gum will not be a pharmaceutical product (the active has GRAS classification if the US) but a functional one.

Just back from the Achema fair in Frankfurt last week. This is a big show for all machienry producers. Not so much related to chewing gum (more on packaging, pharma and chemical industry) but Gabler was exhibiting its extruders for pharma applications. As you may know this company specializes on extrusion, rolling&scoring and coating systems for chewing gum. It inherites the knowledge from previous WLS.